Bush’s energy solution ignores campaign pledge

by Dru Daughtry

(U-WIRE) CINCINNATI enough (U. Cincinnati) -- Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN's John King the answer to solving this country's energy problems lay in increasing the supply of energy sources.

The Bush administration's new proposal would include increasing the amount of energy obtained from nuclear power plants.

"It's a safe technology and doesn't emit any carbon dioxide at all," Cheney said.

However, this statement is as shortsighted and foolish as the rest of Bush's energy policy.

The policy, written chiefly by the vice president, was unveiled yesterday. Democrats and environmentalists who have seen the proposal say they are tilted to favor corporate interests in the energy industry at the expense of consumer needs and environmental causes because Bush and Cheney have strong ties to the oil industry. Both men have worked as oil industry executives.

"It's Christmas in May for the energy industry," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the House energy committee.

"The Cheney plan is extreme and unbalanced and of practically no relevance to the energy-price crisis facing the West and which is beginning to emerge at the gasoline pump in the rest of America," he said.

Markey said the White House energy plan failed to address short-term issues such as gas prices, something Bush acknowledged at a news conference May 11. In addition, Markey said, "A balanced energy policy would seek to avoid extreme proposals, such as drilling in the pristine Arctic Refuge."

In addition to drilling for oil on federal lands, Cheney calls for increasing the amount of coal burned to make oil. If this plan were to go through, it would nullify Bush's campaign promise to cut the amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

Cheney just said the campaign pledge was a mistake, but clearly the mistake was electing a group of men and women who seem so unapologetically cut off from the rest of the country and woefully behind the times.

Proposing to increase the amount of nuclear energy ignores the safety issues, should an accident occur. Not only that, but it also ignores the fact that it is economically unsound.

"There hasn't been a nuclear plant proposed since 1973. And the reason for it is because it is just not economical," said Robert Kennedy Jr., of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It still requires huge government subsidies to make it work and we still don't know what we are going to do with the waste for the next thousand years."

The suggestion of increasing the supply of energy without implementing serious conservation efforts is foolhardy at best.

By focusing on long-term schemes and ignoring the immediate concerns of the American consumer, as well as the environment, the Bush administration has shown it has forsaken its campaign pledges to take care of its own corporate interests.